Personality and clinical skills: any correlation?

To determine correlations between personality factors and clinical skills of second-year medical school students. Participants were 206 medical students who had completed the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) and the Clinical Skills Assessment II (CSA II). of the 16PF and CSA II were analyzed using Pearson R. Results Overall CSA II score correlated positively with Warmth and negatively with Abstractedness and Privateness. Communication skills correlated positively with Warmth, Emotional Stability, and Perfectionism and negatively with Privateness. Data gathering correlated positively with Warmth and negatively with Abstractedness. Physical exam and Case presentation subtests had no correlates. The findings of this study suggest that a relationship may exist between personality and clinical skills.